Instinct
by Dread Pirate
Summary: Sometimes virtue may not be its own reward. When Talim finds herself in a dilemma involving Cervantes, she has some choices to make.


**INSTINCT**

_Author's Note: This is set to take place some time during SCIII. I haven't written anything in a long while, so please bear with me!_

Goodness is a terrible burden to bear.

The young woman's shoulders are so slender it barely seems credible she can carry such a thing alone. She closes her eyes where she stands on the high cliff and slowly draws her arms out wide, embracing the breeze. The thin new dawn sunlight catches on the beautifully-made bracers that curl up her arms: the short steel blades lie flush to her wrists.

She smiles. Such peace. Things will always be right in the world if good people can be at peace. The wind smells cleanly of fresh hay and the tang of salt from the sea below.

The attack takes her by surprise - the main surprise being that it isn't fatal. The tang of salt on the air is suddenly stronger, a wash of sea-scent. She catches the blow, turns it on her elbow blades: this should be the first indication she has that her opponent is not fighting at his best. He has landed the strike from behind her, and by all rights she should be severely wounded. No time to think or play the identification game. Instinct. Act and react. Live or die.

She pivots on one foot, kicks him in the stomach, and watches him reel backwards. A big man, white hair, the play of light from his own swords in the dawn almost blinding.

Talim's eyes widen.

"Cer-Cervantes?"

The pirate staggers with a snarled curse, and lunges at her again. She sidesteps easily -

_Too easy it's too easy -_

- and back-flips to a safe distance, her mind racing.

"What do you want?"

The tremor in her voice as she challenges him makes her heart sink. Her eyes flick over him, unable to look away. He is as pale as a ghost, skin almost blue, and the two blades in his massive fists glitter viciously. Dead. _Cervantes is dead, has been for some time, he's dead, and he's -_

He sways as he raises the swords, as if the sheer weight of them is throwing him off-balance, and has to brace on his back foot to keep from falling.

- _sick_, Talim realises with a stab of confusion. _He's weak and he's sick. _

He strikes, and again she dodges. "I don't want to fight you!" she calls, defiantly, as his momentum carries him past her in a stumbling run. With a growl he swings once more, the larger blade whispering within an inch of her thigh. Two deft movements, and she has laid open his arms. Not deep: his sleeves and armour have done their job and deflected the worst of the damage. A glancing wound at most. But none the less he drops, his apparently powerful body wracked with shudders, and kneels swaying on the ground before her. The blades hang loose in his grip.

Goodness is indeed a terrible burden to bear and it brings with it the weight of choice. Talim has a good heart and in all good conscience cannot hit a man so obviously incapacitated, despite the fact that he hit her first. She stands at a cautious distance, watching him, poised to strike should he move against her. Patience is a virtue: good is virtuous. Good stands like a small, fragile goddess, her chin tilted down as if in absolution upon Evil, who hunches at her feet in obvious pain, teeth clenched.

The choice hangs before her thus - she should kill him. Even the energy of his body is anathema to her, the clinging darkness of it. The very breeze seems to bend away from touching him. The world itself rejects him.

"I should kill you," she whispers to him. He doesn't hear. His eyes blink almost constantly, his white brows drawn down in angry, confused lines. One of the swords, the smaller with the odd gun grip, slips from his grasp and lies useless on the turf. She is obviously in no immediate danger. She should kill him. Every instinct drives her to it. But goodness is there to override instinct: instinct is the reaction of animals, who are amoral and cannot choose. The choice is made. She reaches out to him with her hand, not her blade.

"Cervantes, why are you here? What's wrong with you?"

Her fingers brush the wounds she made on his arms, blood the colour of old indigo staining the tips. And he falls, crashing prone to the ground, the larger sword buried beneath him. Talim dances back, light on her feet, her lips parted slightly in alarm.

"I barely touched you," she murmurs, feeling with horror the tackiness of his dead blood on her hands. Tainted with the goodness of her own heart. It's a harder stain to bear than that of guilt.

Her silhouette against the risen sun is like that of a stone angel standing guard over the resting place of the dead. Slowly, very slowly, the angel bends, and with her hands shaking with revulsion, takes up the great swords first.


End file.
